Really annoyed me that the kiddos voted to not switch, and they got the car. Getting children to understand that 1/3 is smaller than 1/2 is hard enough. I’m going to program my own evil version that only wins on switch the first time next time I do this.

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[–] 52 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Change the problem from 3 doors to a million. Kids pick a door, and the host opens 999,998 doors, leaving theirs and one other door closed. One of the closed doors is the winner. Do they want to switch now?

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago

    This is a good way to think about it, because the three door version makes it almost seem like the host is guessing. But if you pick door #8 and the host eliminates every door except #8 and, for some reason, #682,025, are you more confident in 8 or 682,025?

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 8 months ago* (5 children)

    That’s a good idea. I went with redoing the sim a few times and then also doing stuff with a plinko game, which seemed to help them get it.

    The first couple plinko runs also were really annoying for bellcurve purposes tho.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I explained this to my programmer colleagues. My explanation was lacking so they wrote a numerical simulation and ran it a few million times to be sure.

    They were convinced.

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